The Actin Cytoskeleton

The Actin Cytoskeleton
Author: Brigitte M. Jockusch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 3319463713

Actin is one of the most abundant proteins and ubiquitously expressed in all eukaryotes. In recent years, the analysis of structure and function of such complexes has shed new light on actin's role in cellular and tissue morphogenesis, locomotion and various forms of intracellular motility, but also on its role in nuclear processes like chromatin architecture and transcription. Progress in understanding these different physiological phenomena, but also in unravelling the basis of actin-based pathophysiological processes has been made by combining video microscopy, molecular biology, genetics and biochemistry. Thus, the current research on actin, as ongoing in many international laboratories, is a "hot spot" in basic and translational research in life sciences. In this book on "The Actin Cytoskeleton", twelve internationally renowned authors present specific chapters that cover their recent work concerned with the various roles of actin mentioned above. This comprehensive volume is therefore an attractive handbook for teachers and students in many fields of medicine and pharmacology.

Cell Biology by the Numbers

Cell Biology by the Numbers
Author: Ron Milo
Publisher: Garland Science
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2015-12-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1317230698

A Top 25 CHOICE 2016 Title, and recipient of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) Award. How much energy is released in ATP hydrolysis? How many mRNAs are in a cell? How genetically similar are two random people? What is faster, transcription or translation?Cell Biology by the Numbers explores these questions and dozens of others provid

Actin-based Motility

Actin-based Motility
Author: Marie-France Carlier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2010-09-23
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 904819301X

Since the discovery of actin by Straub in the 1950’s and the pioneering work of Oosawa on actin self-assembly in helical laments in the 1960’s, many books and conference proceedings have been published. As one of the most essential p- teins in life, essential for movement in organisms rangingfrom bacteria to higher eukaryotes, it is no surprise that actin has fascinated generations of scientists from many different elds. Actin can be considered as a “living treasure” of biology; the kinetics and thermodynamics of self-assembly, the dissipative nature of actin po- merization, the molecular interactions of monomeric and polymerized actin with regulators, the mechanical properties of actin gels, and more recently the force p- ducing motile and morphogenetic processes organized by the actin nanomachine in response to signaling, are all milestones in actin research. Discoveries that directly derive from and provide deeper insight into the fundamental properties of actin are constantly being made, making actin an ever appealing research molecule. At the same time, the explosion in new technologies and techniques in biological sciences has served to attract researchers from an expanding number of disciplines, to study actin. This book presents the latest developments of these new multiscale approaches of force and movement powered by self-assembly processes, with the hope to opening our perspectives on the many areas of actin-based motility research.

Tropomyosin

Tropomyosin
Author: Peter Gunning
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2009-09-30
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0387857664

A recent review of one of my grant applications commented on the ‘rediscovery of tropomyosin’. I was tempted to write back in my rebuttal to the reviewer that I didn’t realise it had been lost. Uncharacteristic maturity prevailed and I resisted the temptation, but I was struck by the underlying observation that research on the str- ture and function of tropomyosin has been somewhat invisible, particularly in terms of the cytoskeleton isoforms. So, how can it be that one of the two major components of the actin filament has been so thoroughly overlooked? I suspect that the answer is disappointingly pedestrian. Whereas the biochemistry of the 1980s revealed the potential of tropomyosin isoforms to diversify the function of actin filaments, the subsequent disenchantment with isoform biology in general in the 1990s inhibited growth of this field. With the development of more sophisticated experimental - proaches we are now seeing a growing realisation of the importance of tropomyosin in regulating actin filaments beyond its pivotal role in muscle contraction. The opportunity to edit this book came at a time when we had written several reviews on different aspects of tropomyosin function and I had just finished the background reading for a comprehensive review of tropomyosin biology. I realised that the field was simply beyond the capacity of any one person to do the field j- tice.

Wound Healing

Wound Healing
Author: Vlad Alexandrescu
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2016-10-12
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9535126784

Outstanding scientific advances over the last decades unceasingly reveal real complexity of wound-healing process, astonishing in its staged progression, as life is unfolding itself. This natural course of tissue repair seems to bear thousands of overlapping molecular and macroscopic processes that nowadays only start to unfold to our knowledge. The present volume collecting recent scientific references proposes to readers a two-folded audacious goal. First, an updated design of intimate cellular mechanisms is entailed in tissue regeneration that emanates from the first section of the book. Next, a multidisciplinary therapeutic perspective that focuses on macroscopic healing throughout the second part of this work adds clinically integrated observation. Practical diagnostic and treatment information is appended in each chapter that may equally help experienced clinicians or dedicated students and researchers in broadening essential breaking points of their work. It is the wish of all multidisciplinary experts who gather prominent author's panel of this volume to incorporate latest medical reports and compel limits of current understanding for better tissue regeneration, limb salvage, and improved quality of life of our patients.

Mechanobiology in Health and Disease

Mechanobiology in Health and Disease
Author: Stefaan Verbruggen
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2018-08-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0128129530

Mechanobiology in Health and Disease brings together contributions from leading biologists, clinicians, physicists and engineers in one convenient volume, providing a unified source of information for researchers in this highly multidisciplinary area. Opening chapters provide essential background information on cell mechanotransduction and essential mechanobiology methods and techniques. Other sections focus on the study of mechanobiology in healthy systems, including bone, tendons, muscles, blood vessels, the heart and the skin, as well as mechanobiology studies of pregnancy. Final chapters address the nascent area of mechanobiology in disease, from the study of bone conditions, skin diseases and heart diseases to cancer. A discussion of future perspectives for research completes each chapter in the volume. This is a timely resource for both early-career and established researchers working on mechanobiology. - Provides an essential digest of primary research from many fields and disciplines in one convenient volume - Covers both experimental approaches and descriptions of mechanobiology problems from mathematical and numerical perspectives - Addresses the hot topic of mechanobiology in disease, a particularly dynamic field of frontier science

Cytoskeleton

Cytoskeleton
Author: Jose C. Jimenez-Lopez
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2017-05-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9535131699

The cytoskeleton is a highly dynamic intracellular platform constituted by a three-dimensional network of proteins responsible for key cellular roles as structure and shape, cell growth and development, and offering to the cell with "motility" that being the ability of the entire cell to move and for material to be moved within the cell in a regulated fashion (vesicle trafficking). The present edition of Cytoskeleton provides new insights into the structure-functional features, dynamics, and cytoskeleton's relationship to diseases. The authors' contribution in this book will be of substantial importance to a wide audience such as clinicians, researches, educators, and students interested in getting updated knowledge about molecular basis of cytoskeleton, such as regulation of cell vital processes by actin-binding proteins as cell morphogenesis, motility, their implications in cell signaling, as well as strategies for clinical trial and alternative therapies based in multitargeting molecules to tackle diseases, that is, cancer.

Behaviourism in Studying Swarms: Logical Models of Sensing and Motoring

Behaviourism in Studying Swarms: Logical Models of Sensing and Motoring
Author: Andrew Schumann
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2018-05-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319915428

This book presents fundamental theoretical results for designing object-oriented programming languages for controlling swarms. It studies the logics of swarm behaviours. According to behaviourism, all behaviours can be controlled or even managed by stimuli in the environment: attractants (motivational reinforcement) and repellents (motivational punishment). At the same time, there are two main stages in reactions to stimuli: sensing (perceiving signals) and motoring (appropriate direct reactions to signals). This book examines the strict limits of behaviourism from the point of view of symbolic logic and algebraic mathematics: how far can animal behaviours be controlled by the topology of stimuli? On the one hand, we can try to design reversible logic gates in which the number of inputs is the same as the number of outputs. In this case, the behaviouristic stimuli are inputs in swarm computing and appropriate reactions at the motoring stage are its outputs. On the other hand, the problem is that even at the sensing stage each unicellular organism can be regarded as a logic gate in which the number of outputs (means of perceiving signals) greatly exceeds the number of inputs (signals).